Here's how you can build an editorial strategy that drives both engagement and measurable return on investment (ROI).

Know What You’re Talking About: Establish Expertise and Relevance 

The foundation of any successful content strategy starts with knowing what you're talking about.  

This means: 

• Understanding your industry: Stay up-to-date with the latest trends, challenges, and innovations in your sector. Share knowledge that educates, informs, or solves a specific problem for your audience. 

• Addressing pain points: Think about the problems your target audience is facing and offer actionable solutions. When you position yourself as a problem solver, your content will naturally attract more attention. 

• Building credibility: Leverage data, case studies, or industry examples to back up your points. This establishes authority and builds trust with your audience. 

Ultimately, your content needs to be more than just informational—it should demonstrate that you are a credible voice in your field. 

Clarify Your Goals: What Are You Trying to Achieve? 

Once you’ve established your area of expertise, the next step is to define what you want your content strategy to accomplish. Without clear objectives, it's impossible to measure success or ROI. Here are some common goals content strategies aim to achieve: 

• Brand Awareness: Are you trying to introduce your brand to a new audience or increase visibility among your existing followers? 

• Lead Generation: Are you looking to capture email addresses, phone numbers, or other forms of contact to nurture prospects? 

• Sales Conversions: Do you want your content to directly drive product or service sales? 

• Engagement: Are you focused on increasing social interactions, likes, comments, or shares? 

Clarifying your goals will shape the type of content you produce, the channels you use, and the way you measure success. 

The Holy Grail of a Winning Marketing Strategy: Clean Attribution 

Achieving measurable ROI requires a clean attribution model. Attribution refers to tracking which channels, touchpoints, and actions lead to the desired outcome—be it a conversion, a lead capture, or an engagement. Without proper attribution, it's impossible to determine which efforts are truly driving value. 

Here’s how you can approach clean attribution: 

• Multi-Channel Attribution: Most customers interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints before converting. This could include social media platforms, blogs, paid ads, email campaigns, and more. To understand which touchpoints are having the most impact, you’ll need an attribution model that tracks the full customer journey. 

• Tracking Tools: Tools like Google Analytics, UTM parameters, and CRM systems help capture data across touchpoints and give you a clearer picture of your content's performance. 

• Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding how users interact with your brand across different stages of their journey (awareness, consideration, decision) helps you optimize content for each touchpoint. 

The result? You’ll know exactly how your content contributed to the desired outcome—and which content or channel had the most significant impact. 

 Building Your Content Ecosystem for Maximum ROI 

Creating a content ecosystem means producing content that can be repurposed and distributed across various channels to maximize reach and impact. The goal is to leverage long-form content as the cornerstone and then break it down into shorter, more shareable pieces for distribution across different acquisition channels. 

Starting with Long-Form Content 

Long-form content like blog posts or LinkedIn articles can serves as a foundation. Not only does this approach provide in-depth insights, but it also creates opportunities to repurpose content across different platforms. This makes room for lean scalability in the future.

• Blog Posts: Write comprehensive, well-researched blog posts that answer common questions or solve problems. A 600-word blog post is a good starting point for most audiences. 

• LinkedIn Articles: If your audience is professional or B2B-focused, LinkedIn long-form articles can help establish your authority in the industry. 

These pieces can then be broken down into smaller snippets for use across other channels. By repurposing content, you save time and effort while ensuring consistent messaging. 

Repurposing Content: Omni-channel Distribution

To ensure your content reaches the right people, distribute it across multiple acquisition channels. Here’s a suggested breakdown of how to repurpose long-form content: 

• Email Campaigns: Send three email updates with bite-sized takeaways from your long-form content. Each email could be around 100 words, offering a teaser or valuable insight with a CTA to read the full article or blog post. 

• Social Media Posts: Break down your long-form content into digestible pieces for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. 

• Facebook & Instagram: Craft posts that are brief but compelling (150 characters each). These posts should encourage engagement and drive users to the full article. 

• TikTok Reels: Create short, engaging videos that capture the essence of your blog post (again, 150 characters or 30-second snippets work well here). 

• Twitter Posts: Share quick takeaways or questions that encourage interaction and drive traffic to your content. 

A/B Testing for Content Optimization 

To ensure your content strategy is as effective as possible, A/B testing is essential. This means testing different variations of your content across platforms to see what resonates best with your audience. For example, you might: 

• Test different headlines for blog posts. 

• Try varying the messaging in email subject lines to see which generates higher open rates. 

• Experiment with different call-to-action (CTA) phrasing on social media to boost engagement and click-throughs. 

Test Window: 30 Days (I’d rather go long with organic strategies. Paid needs to be much shorter)

Metrics to Track for Success 

To understand if your editorial strategy is effective, tracking the right metrics is crucial. Here are some important metrics for capturing the impact of your content: 

• Clicks: Are people clicking on your content across various channels? 

• Engagement: Are users interacting with your posts (likes, shares, comments)? 

• Website Traffic: How much traffic is coming from each channel to your website? 

• Dwell Time: How long are users staying on your site or content? Longer dwell time generally indicates more valuable content that resonates with your audience. 

You should map the user flow from the time they engage with your content to when they take an action (like filling out a lead form or making a purchase). After you have 50+ users interacting with your content, you’ll start seeing trends that will help you optimize your strategy. 

Tracking ROI: The Final Step 

To determine the ROI of your content strategy, you need to clearly track conversions. Your conversion window (the time it takes for users to complete a desired action) should be around 30 days. This allows enough time to capture conversions that occur after initial engagement. 

Conversion Value: This is calculated by multiplying your average order value (AOV) by the total number of completed conversions (e.g., transactions). 

For example, if your average sale is $100 and you made 50 sales from your content campaign, your total conversion value would be $5,000. 

Attribution Model: The Multi-Channel Funnels report in Google Analytics (or similar tools) allows you to track the various touchpoints a user encounters on their path to conversion. This is crucial for understanding the impact of each channel and piece of content. For instance, did users initially engage with your blog post, or did they first see a Facebook ad? 

By using these insights, you can continually refine your content strategy to ensure that your editorial efforts are driving real, measurable business outcomes. 

Conclusion 

Developing an editorial strategy that generates revenue and measurable ROI requires a strategic approach. Start by defining your goals, establishing your expertise, and implementing a clean attribution model. From there, create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose your content for maximum reach across multiple platforms. A/B testing, tracking the right metrics, and measuring ROI will ensure that your efforts pay off. By continuously refining your approach, you’ll create a content strategy that not only engages your audience but also delivers tangible results.